ORBzine - UK TV Roundup July 2000
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First Week, July 2000This is a retelling of the story of Ivanhoe. Financed in the UK, filmed in NZ.
Geoffrey Lewis [Clint Eastwood's sidekick in Any Which Way But Loose] plays a crime-scene photographer who takes photos of murder victims as the crime is being committed. Mulder and Scully are on Background Check duty when Scully is pulled and transferred to investigate Lewis. Mulder does the backup work for her, and phones her up every time he finds something useful.
The hero and comic-relief drive around a post-apocalyptic wasteland, helping strangers and slaughtering biker trash. Same as last week, in other words. . . Codename: Eternity [Season 1, Episode 8] Making Love This is reviewed in our special supplement! .
Robert Trebor and Danielle Cormack are regular guest-stars on the show, as Salmoneus the merchant and Ephiny the Amazon. In this episode they guest-star as a pair of 1789 French Aristocrats, straight out of Les Liaisons Dangereux. Trebor reveals himself to be The Charteuse Fox, a leftie who robs from Aristocrats and gives to the Peasants. They make a bet - Trebor claims he can make a Peasant into a hero. Enter Sorbo and Hurst - not their usual heroic types, they play a couple of thieving highwaymen. TV shows descend into mediocrity with 2 kinds of episodes - the in-jokey type and the flashback type. This episode manages to be both. However, the best inserted scenes are not actually from this show - they are Conan the Barbarian [the orgy scene] and Spartacus [the bath-house scene]. Unusually for USA TV, the end promotes the socialist French Revolution and is really nothing more than Commie propaganda. The lab assistant guy is recovering from his injuries from last episode. Meanwhile, Parker has to get over the apparent death of another team-mate. Tom's corpse is discovered, but it turns out to be his clone. The killer is a clone of the serial-killer Lynch. We know they are clone because apparently identical twins do not have identical DNA a theory which this reviewer doubts. Anyway, it appears the new species have been cloning their best and brightest, and there may be a lot more than 200,000 of them. The Lynch Clone is after Tom and Parker. Larry Drake has them taken to a FBI safe-house, but Lynch II follows them ...
Second Week, July 2000
This is a double-episode story that deals with the X-Files Arc, if it can be called one. The first episode is narrated by CSM [the villain, Cigarette-Smoking Man] to an unseen accomplice. A surgical room in a rail carriage [like the one Scully was abducted and taken to] is attacked by the alien Rebels. The only survivor is Cassandra Spender [ Veronica Cartwright ] who was abducted last season. Agent Spender passes on her request for help from Mulder, who is reluctant to get involved. Rightly so - Spender is still working with his father, CSM.
Towards the end of the second episode the plot is revealed, and most of the loose ends are tied up. There are still a few [shape-changing aliens, anyone?], but after 6 years and one movie we are so glad to finally get to grips with the damn thing that nobody cares enough to complain!
The comic-relief dude is lost in the desert, starving. After a brief comedy interlude where he mistakes a hungry vulture for a turkey dinner, he sees the wee girl Lynn being transported by Slavers. He informs the Big Dipper dude, and they go to the Slavers' city. The arch-villain is King, who rules with the aid of 4 Jacks - Spade [killed last week], Club, Heart and Diamond. This week it's Diamond and Clubs' turns. .
This is reviewed in our special supplement! Babylon 5: Crusade [Season 1, Episode 2] The Long Road This is reviewed in our special supplement! . Codename: Eternity [Season 1, Episode 9] Death Trap This is reviewed in our special supplement! .
This is reviewed in our special supplement! . .
This is reviewed in the special supplement! . . .
This is reviewed in a special supplement! . . 3rd Rock From The Sun [Season 4] Harry's GF has a vision of him as the Oogachakka baby from Ally McBeal, and decides she wants to have his child. Sally [ Kristen Johnston ] wants to move out and get a place of her own. Dick [John Lithgow] tries in vain to keep the unit together.
Star Trek: Deep Space 9 [Season 3, Episode 6] The Abandoned This is reviewed in a special supplement! . .
Third Week, JulyAs with last week, we have a double-bill. However, these are 2 single episodes rather than a double-episode story.
The dynamic duo investigate a novelist who predicts things and writes about them before they happen.
Mulder and Scully are trapped in a bank by Ed from Northern Exposure, who blows everyone up. After the credits roll, Mulder wakes up in a leaky waterbed. It must be the one he got last Season - he claims no knowledge of how it got there. The FBI are having trouble with their estimates of future crime statistics. Ed the robber's GF, in comparison, appears to be re-living the day repeatedly. This concept has been used many times before, most recently in Give My Head Peace. This time, however, although Mulder and Scully remain unaware of their fate there are slight differences in their actions each time.
This is reviewed in a special supplement! . . . 3rd Rock From The Sun [Season 4, Episode 18] Superstitious Dick Jane Curtin tells Dick [John Lithgow] to throw out a chainletter - and then she is injured in a number of unlikely accidents! Sally [ Kristen Johnston ] develops a crush on a guy who works in the hardware store.
The hero goes up against the fourth Jack, a sumo-looking martial arts expert. Apparently the show was originally filmed in 1984, and only redubbed for the English-speaking world in 1999. And for some reason, although the show only has about 5 characters the English-language cast list has over 20 names! .
This is reviewed in our special supplement! . . . Codename: Eternity [Season 1, Episode 10] This is reviewed in our special supplement! .
This is reviewed in our special supplement! . .
This is reviewed in a special supplement! . . Dr Attwood [Larry Drake] is ordered by his babelicious FBI controller to negotiate a peace settlement with a nonhuman faction. He asks the African-American ex-cop to act as his backup for the deal. Oddly enough, the nonhuman is also African-American; it seems that although the nonhumans came from Mexico none were Mexican! Meanwhile, Ed's experiments with the DNA vaccine seem to be working. Tom insists that the vaccine be used on himself before the lives of other members of his species are put at risk. The end is a cliffhanger - and the end of the show. Yes, it was cancelled mid-season.
Fourth Week, July 2000The ex-BF of Rebecca [the babe of the series] turns up, to escort King Richard's ransom to the pay-off point. However, as always happens in this kind of show the BF is not all that he appears to be. Meanwhile the villainous Mage, Mordus, goes back in time to kill Ivanhoe as a baby.
The night before a selfish rich-bitch Princess's arranged marriage to a neighbouring King, she is kidnapped by slavers hired by her sister. The younger Princess, you see, is an intelligent young lady who would actually be best-suited to rule the Kingdom. The rich-bitch is saved by Herc and Iolus, who follow their usual policy of murder all the men, keep the women for sex.
This is reviewed in the special supplement! . . . As with last week, we have a double-bill. However, these are 2 single episodes rather than a double-episode story.
Mulder and Scully are finally taken off the scut-work roster, and go undercover in suburbia to investigate a series of disappearances.
Crewmen aboard a chinese freighter are found bitten to death. The creature responsible is apparently a chinese dog, of a breed that was supposed to be extinct 150 years ago. The dog was shipped over by Andrew J. Robinson [Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 ]. Mulder's source is a local canine expert he met on-line - she and Mulder supposedly have Chemistry together, and Scully gets jealous. In an unintentional Scooby-Doo reference, Mulder tells his partner, You get a biscuit, Scully.
It turns out that the arch-villain is the Fist of the South Star, second pupil of the hero's Sensei. They were rivals over the affections of the hero's GF - and we finally get to see the hero get a dose of his own medicine. . .
This is reviewed in our special supplement! . . .
This is reviewed in our special supplement! . .
This is reviewed in the special supplement! . . .
This is reviewed in a special supplement! . . 3rd Rock From The Sun [Season 4, Episode 19] Y2Dick Jane Curtin tells Dick [John Lithgow] that since he has been there for 3 years it is time to learn how to use his computer. Yes, the super-intelligent alien can't use technology so backward it can't even read your thought waves. He does a Scotty from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. However, Dick discovers the Internet and likes it so much he decides to perform his Lectures on-line via a web-cam from his home. Sally [ Kristen Johnston ] and Tommy go out to buy a new TV. They decide to pay the extra and go digital - yes, they get DVDs and all they can think to watch is Leprechaun 2! Harry and his GF are still trying to get pregnant. It has only been 1 month, but they have not yet been successful. Perhaps his alien physiology has something to do with it. Ivanhoe has to fight off a mystical assassin. Meanwhile, his wench has problems of her own.
This episode, directed by Robert Trebor, starts with a man being chased by a lynch-mob. Herc corners the man in a disused mineshaft, which inconveniently collapses. The fugitive has been accused of breaking into a house and killing the family who lived there. However, he claims to be innocent. Herc should be more sympathetic, as he recalls that he himself was accused of a murder he did not commit. Instead, Herc's response is to make the fugitive take responsibility for his actions.
This is reviewed in the special supplement! . . . As with last week, we have a double-bill. However, these are 2 single episodes rather than a double-episode story.
There's a hurricane in Florida, and a family trapped in their home are menaced by an unseen sea-monster. Mulder gets a call from their next-door neighbour, an ex-Fed who used to work on the X-Files. Yes, this is Darren McGavin again, playing the character he portrayed last Season. The dynamic duo end up trapped in a building with a monster and some civilians, including a pregnant woman.
A prison farm is hit by a tornado, after the Guard Captain ordered a prisoner to be locked in the hole. When the storm is over the prisoner is missing believed dead, and the Captain is dead believed from spontaneous human combustion. Mulder and Scully end up in pursuit of a notoriously violent and dangerous criminal who has the ability to pass through solid objects.
The blonde-haired blue-eyed villain takes his dainty, distressed damsel to the city of Southern Cross, which he rules with a Special Forces unit called God's Army. The hero permanently cripples a thug, and tells him you will have to find an honest way to earn a living. He then helps the serfs rebel against the police: they don't mind having the police take responsibility for law enforcement, but object to paying taxes!
This is reviewed in our special supplement! . . . Codename: Eternity [Season 1, Episode 11] Thief This is reviewed in our special supplement! .
This is reviewed in our special supplement! . . |
Hercules [Season 3, Episode 17]
Les Contemptibles
Babylon 5: Crusade [Season 1, Episode 1]
War Zone
Farscape [Season 2, Episode 3]
Taking The Stone
Star Trek: The Original Series [Season 1, Episode 5]
The Enemy Within
Buffy [Season 3, Episode 12]
Helpless
Star Trek: Deep Space 9 [Season 3, Episode 5]
Second Skin
Star Trek: Voyager [Season 5, Episode 18]
Course: Oblivion
Charmed [Season 1]
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